The political crisis following the elections IN THE APRIL 1983 elections, the government of Mario Soares, the leader of the Socialist Party (PS), won a comfortable majority of 36%. This gave the party the largest majority it had ever had in government because of the alliance between the PS and the main bourgeois party, the Social Democrats (PSD). This coalition government, known as the Bloco Central, lasted longer than any government since the April 1974 'revolution of the carnations'.
For the last two years this government has been implementing austerity policies which have slashed real wages by nearly 10%, according to trade union statistics; increased unemployment and reduced investment and consumer buying power.
Hence in the October 6 elections, 1985 the PS got only 20%, its worst result since before April 1974 and the PSD has formed the new government. These results and the preparation for the upcoming presidential elections in January 1986 show signs of an increasing political instability in the country.
social base away from him.
But the US is not ready to let history repeat itself and stand by and watch an allied government be overthrown in a few hours, whether
Grenada or anywhere else in the Caribbean.
The US has withdrawn its troops from Grenada, because keeping them there was expensive, pointless, and politically counterproductive. But it did so after setting up a 600-strong police force, and in particular a very well equiped paramilitary force of ighty persons.
The US has done the same thing on several islands, and these units are integrated into a regional security system with its command center on Barbados.
Alongside US and British troops, these forces participated in exercises
September on the island of Saint Lucia. The scenario was an invasion of an island that had fallen under the control of insurgents supported by Marxist-Leninist states called "Carumba" (Cuba) and "Nigaro" (Nicaragua).
Such exercises are scheduled for all the islands, and this will enable the US troops to get a better knowledge of the terrain than they had during the invasion of Grenada. Having failed to gain any political or economic successes in Grenada in a year's time, the US is falling back on military power, its only certainty.
FRANCISCO LOUCA
The final downfall of the apparently stable Bloco Central government was partially also a result of a change in the leadership of the PSD at its June 1985 conference. The majority of the PSD were no longer prepared to play a subordinate role, obediently supporting Mario Soares' candidature for the presidential elections in January 1986. A victory for Soares in these elections was supposed to redefine the relations between the two parties and re-cement the Bloco Central. However, in June, the newly elected leader of the PSD, Cavaco Silva, provoked the downfall of the government. In so doing he started from the supposition that the October 1985 elections would be a severe test for the government in which the PS's policy of austerity would be rejected. This would undermine, at the same time, the presidential ambitions of Soares and open up a new parliamentary conjuncture.
The October 6 elections confirmed his prediction. The PS lost 16% (nearly a million votes) and 47 deputies. Its parliamentary group dropped to nearly half of that at the 1983 elections. This was the worst result since before April 25, 1974.
The PSD formed a government with 30% of the votes. It is already setting out a policy of limited increases in real wages and pensions in order to increase internal consumption. At the same time it is reducing interest rates. It is also hoping to embark upon changes in the country's economic position very quickly, even if that means incurring an external debt.
The other major surprise of these elections is the dazzling appearance of a new political force, the Democratic Renewal Party (PRD), sponsored by the current president of the republic, General Ramalho Eanes. This party has emerged as the main beneficiary of the loss of votes to the PS and, to a certain degree, of the losses of the Communist Party as well. The PRD got 18% of the vote and 45 seats in parliament.
The PS spent most of its campaign assuring people that there was light at the end of the tunnel' and that after two years of austerity it would now be possible for them to satisfy popular demands in government. Funds available from the European Economic Community (EEC) were presented as the guarantee of such a change.
The defeat of the Socialist Party can be explained by several factors. Firstly, austerity. The last two years have marked a massive offensive against the
5
International Viewpoint 23 December 1985
workers by the most dynamic sections of the Portuguese bourgeoisie, that is the export manufacturers of large and medium sized enterprises, concentrated in the North of the contry. For this sector, whose produce of textiles, shoes, and certain intermediary goods is virtually wholly intended for export to European and, to a lesser degree, American, markets, a period of rapid decline of the internal market is relatively immaterial. On the other hand any measures which put pressure on wages and on the jobs market suit them very well. It is from this point of view that they were demanding complete freedom to lay off workers, that they were already expanding the use of short-term contracts, keeping wages below the official minimum and using non-registered labour or subcontracts with intermediary agencies.
The government proved sympathetic to this orientation and even agreed to what became a legal scandal known as the practice of 'delayed' wages. This system, as its name implies, means that the bosses do not pay wages at times which they vaguely describe as financially difficult. The workers carry on working and no checks are carried out. This situation is now very serious since it concerns more than 150,000 workers, that is about 500,000 individuals for a country of ten million inhabitants. During the election campaign cases came to light of public companies using this primitive method of accumlation. The Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR), Portuguese section of the Fourth International, highlighted cases of private, public employers and even of a workplace in the Lisbon local authority who were doing this. Mario Soares supported by the US
A vicious policy of austerity, therefore, was the first reason for the rejection of the government. The people identified this policy with the Socialist Party. But there was a further reason. The promise of the 'light at the end of the tunnel' idea was beginning to wear a bit thin. On the one hand it had been repeated at every election, and yet, on the other, people knew that in the two years of the PS-PSD government there had been massive and unprecedented corruption and nepotism in the making of public appointments. There were judges fixing the price for the release of criminals and heads of state banks involved in monstrous misappropriation of funds. In fact one of them was financing a contraband network in Setubal headed, it was discovered, by police and tax depart6 ment chiefs. It is publically known that the PS national commission discussed the allocation of 400 civil servants posts for the EEC which are assigned to Portugal and which were hotly debated by various supporters. The reaction against this way of conducting political affairs, against the scandalous manipulation of the media - Prime Minister Mario Soares, for instance has, in two years, appeared on all the television news programmes, -finally benefited those parties who were making vague noises about a remoralisation of public life, that is the PSD and the PRD.
Mario Soares' candidacy for president has, in the last year, received clear support from the US administration. Within the Socialist International (SI) Mario Soares and the leadership of the Portuguese Socialist Party are seen as the most consistent allies of Reagan. Mario Soares was thus the first leader of the SI to organise a tour for Eden Pastora, one of the Contra leaders in Nicaragua. He was also the first head of state to support the US invasion of Grenada and the Star Wars project. This is why leading political circles in the US have intervened in favour of Soares' candidature. His most serious rival until last summer was General Firmino Miguel. He was favoured by the right, General Eanes himself and all his party, and he actually withdrew his candidacy after having been strongly advised to do so by NATO officials.
The above plan aimed to keep the PS-PSD coalition going, with, in this case the main role being played by the PS and to establish within it a kind of rotation mechanism, which would guarantee institutional stability. For it is here that the restructuring of the bourgeois state, destroyed by the fall of the dictatorship and the 1974-1975 prerevolutionary crisis, has failed.
That the plan was so definitely formulated over the summer is evideneed in the statements of Frank Shakespeare, the American ambassador in Lisbon, on Radio Free Europe. In a session of the commision of the Chamber of American representatives, Shakespeare said that developments in Portugal were going in the direction of a stabilisation of the dominance of these two parties and of a marginalisation of all the others. This, as far as he was concerned, was a positive development. The break up of the coalition and the problems for the Soares' candidature in the presidential elections mean that this plan is no longer viable. Quite the contrary, for the election results go in the direction of increasing government instability which will be aggravated by the race for the presidential elections in January 1986, the results of which are very uncertain. In line with its policy in government, the PS chose defence of institutional stability as its main electoral theme. In so doing it ran the risk that the electorate would understand this stability to mean the continuation of generalised corruption, the trading of favours and the manipulation of information.
The PS then added to these unpopular choices by putting a small monarchist party on its electoral lists. This party was aligned with the right when it was in the 1983 government. They put a man like Antonio Barreto at the head of the list in the district of Alentejo, a man who as minister had launched the first real attacks on the agricultural reforms gained during the 1974-1975 revolution. In the last months of his government he approved a law on internal security' , which, from the formal point of view, was even more repressive than the laws which Salazar had bestowed, even if of course, the dietatorship went far beyond them in practice.
In order to confront the Communist Party (PCP), the PS decided to present joint lists with the PSD in the municipal elections due to take place in December 1985. However, since the break-up of the coalition government, the PSD was now in open competition with the PS in the run up to the legislative elections. Alliances have been formed with the PSD in nearly all the towns where the Communist Party heads the municipal councils. The PS and the PSD were united in almost a third of the country to overthrow PC-led councils. This alliance was formed during the September election campaign which gives some indication of the political opportunism and direction of Mario Soares. What is the significance of this?
The PC controls the majority of the popular quarters, of the industrial towns and of the areas affected by the agricultural reforms. The alliance of the PS with the main bourgeois party in these areas will inevitably take on the meaning of a class offensive and will be seen as such by the workers. It accentuates the PS break with its worker and peasant base.
What is more, due to an ironic twist of fate, the PS-PSD coalitions were not able to be legally ratified because of an adminstrative error caused by the fact that the signature of the PSD representative has not yet been certified. To deal with this problem, which cropped up after the PSD election victory, the formation of the new government and the withdrawal of the PS, the Soares leadership proposed to integrate the PS candidates as independents International Viewpoint 23 December 1985
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" Mario Soares' (Second on the left) government is sworn in, January 1978.
on the PSD lists and vice-versa according to the areas. This is how it happened that in Almada, for example, which is a working class city of 150,000 inhabitants where the large naval shipyards of Lisnave are, there will be no PS list because the party will be supporting the PSD list. In other cases a mutual arrangement for a 'democratic list' has been set up. This type of electoral coalition suited both parties so well that, when the legal problems cropped up and they decided to change the nature of the alliance, they decided at the same, time to stand candidates in towns where it had not been initially envisaged.
These choices cannot be explained without understanding the real nature of the Socialist Party. Formed out of a petty bourgeois group in 1973, under the patronage of Willy Brandt and with German social democracy and the bourgeois republican left in Portugal as its reference points, the PS turned itself into a big electoral party from April 25, 1974. At that time it expressed the desire for social justice, democracy, socialism. In other words it had all the aspirations of a movement finding its feet on the road to political independence. Since it has no real tradition or links with the workers movement the PS depends mainly on its integration into the state apparatus. Through this means it created a union structure, the General Workers Union (UGT). Here they established from the beginning that the leadership be made up of Socialists and rightwing parties. A worker-bourgeois or bourgeois workers' party, as Lenin described it, is the best way of understanding the basis of SP policies and current direction. The transfer of votes from the PS to the PRD constitutes, in some ways, a reaction to the practice of the
International Viewpoint 23 December 1985 government and to this way of operating. It was greatly facilitated by the established credibility of the PRD and its links with General Eanes.
He was the victor in the military coup d'etat on November 25, 1975, which ended the revolution of the carnations. Elected president in 1976 with the votes of the PS and all the right-wing, and again in 1980 with PS, PCP and sections of the right voting for him, Eanes is one of the guarantees of the continued stability of the state. The PRD phenomenon
In drawing together dissidents from the bourgeois parties and the PS the new party got a vote very close to that of the PS on October 6 and could go beyond that in future elections. Whilst consolidating itself as a bourgeois party, it is nevertheless seeking to maintain a popular base among the workers and the petty bourgeoisie. By remaining outside the government it can keep up the slightly critical attitude which brought it such a good result. On the other hand, after the election of a new president in January 1986, Eanes will have to formally assume the leadership of his party. As the current president, Eanes has a certain prestige with the people coupled with a leftish image because of the persistent attacks of the right on him as an individual. He will be the main beneficiary of the discrediting of the political and parliamentary system.
But it is unlikely that the PRD will be able to stablise its support in the long-term. Within the context of constitutional crises which are going to get worse, and in view of the
At the microphone, President Eanes (DR) fact that it does not occupy a centra place, the PRD will try to find room for manoeuvre by playing a balancing role in parliament and by becoming a pivot of stability within the crisis of the state apparatus. The PS tried to carry out this type of operation once. But social contradictions, in whatever form, will make it difficult to operate a policy based on moral promises which will have nothing to say concretely on issues like the security laws, the changes in the laws on redundancy and dismissal and the attacks on trade union rights which will be a constant feature of the PSD government of Cavaco Silva.
In fact, the PRD has already found itself up against a difficult choice in the presidential elections, between Colonel Costa Bras, Eanes' choice, and Lourdes Pintasligo, whose popularity symbolises the declining confidence of the electorate in the traditional parties. This latter was a former ambassador under the dictatorship and prime minister of the transition from 1979-1980. She was defrocked as a nun and for some years now has been developing a kind of Third Worldist and populist demagogy which brings her support from across the spectrum; from former far leftists through to a large section of the PS and PCP electorate. Up until now she has always remained outside of party structures and is the most highly rated candidate according to opinion polls. With its leadership going for Costa Bras and its base for Pintasligo, the choice is a difficult one for the PRD. The attitudes and positions taken around the defensive class conflicts which are on the way will take on a huge importance in clarifying the contradictory situation after the elections.
The PCP participated in the elections through a formal coalition
7
THE PSR CAMPAIGN
THE PARTIDO Socialista Revolucionario (PSR), the Portuguese section of the Fourth International, conducted an excellent campaign in which they doubled their votes compared to the 1983 elections.
even though tactical voting for the
PS affected the results for the far left. It got 35,000 votes, that is
0.6% of votes expressed. The PSR campaign centred on the basic problems of the crisis that is unemployment, 'delayed wages'; and on the balance sheet of the PS's policy of alliance with the right.
This orientation got an echo among sections of the popular masses and in the media.
The editor of the main cultural weekly in the country, and a
PRD voter, published, during the campaign, an editorial underlining the main reasons for this impact:
'In the midst of all this, in the daily bombardment being rained down on the heads of the voters, there is only one party which is conducting a campaign worthy of praise and which has intelligent things to say;
that is the campaign of the PSR, which gives such unprecedented television broadcasts.
'Recently the PSR provided us one of the best pieces of televised news information for many years. In it, a woman named
Teresa Rosa, a civil servant from the
Setnave, explained how she had been arrested under suspicion of being a member of FP-25 (Popular Forces of April 25), an armed organisation of the far left, was detained for six months and then released because there had been an error ... I do not know if a vote for this party is useful' but its electoral campaign has certainly entitled the Alliance for a united people' which got 15.5% of the vote, a loss of 3%. This loss benefited the PRD, whose formation has been supported by the PCP for the last five years in an effort to divide the PS. This latter goal was the PCP's main objective in the elections, which is why, despite their electoral decline and the victory of Cavaco Silva, they were able to characterise the results of October 6 as a victory for democracy' The PSD in government
This fight against the PS, largely facilitated by the alliances of the latter with the right-wing as the whole business of the town councils demonstrates, was the main theme of the PCP's campaign. Their main enemy in the presidential elections is Mario Soares and, in light of this, they are prepared to support Costa Bras. Although they are presenting a membeen more than useful. From the cultural point of view I would even say that it is the only campaign that has been of any use. It provided news and exchange of ideas, revelations for those, who, like me began looking in the newspaper for the details of the next PSR programme. Its not so much an appeal for votes as an act of democratic justice. All sorts of ideas have come and gone but the radical ferment of this campaign remains.'
The television campaign was also used to popularise other initiatives such as the occupation of South African institutions to protest against apartheid; the symbolie occupation of the old Saint Jorge castle, overlooking Lisbon to protest against war and militarism; actions in defence of young people; meetings in the factories and the popular quarters; the defence of Otelo de Carvalho against repression and arbitrary police action, for he was on trial at the time, accused of being a leader of the FP-25.
The choice of this type of campaign was deliberate. The PSR refused the PCP's proposal to go onto their lists in exchange for getting a deputy elected. It prefered to conduct an independent campaign in which it could present the maximum number of candidates allowed under the law, that is around 320 in the country as a whole. The balance sheet is very positive. Revolutionaries can conduct electoral campaigns which, far from isolating them, will enhance their capacity for dialogue and influence in the mass movement. ber of their own central committee as a candidate, they make no secret of the fact that the principal objective of their campaign will be to persuade Communist voters not to vote for Soares or Pintasligo, before withdrawing at the end of the campaign in favour of Costa Bras, Eanes' designated successor whom they also supported in the 1980 elections.
The PCP's main error, which is disarming the trade union movement, is obviously the under-estimation of the danger represented by the formation of the new PS government. Cavaco Silva is capable of launching a very dangerous offensive against the trade union movement. In the coming year he is likely to increase wages selectively and try to reduce certain social tensions in order to give himself the room to carry out anti-trade-union and anti-right-to-strike policies. This would be the best opportunity for enacting repressive laws against the trade unions and against certain rights that have been won. This is the main thing that the employers are asking for at the present time. If such attacks are accompanied by a slight altacks are accompanied by a slight improvement on the wages front it will be very difficult to mount a serious opposition.
It is true that because it only got 30% of the votes the PSD government will be dependent on all sorts of parliamentary alliances, which is different from the 1980-1983 rightwing bloc which had an absolute majority. However, the government will probably have about one year in which to carry out its populist policies and have recourse to certain Keynesian type measures.
Cavaco Silva will therefore have to face the following challenge; to conduct a policy which is firm enough to satisfy the bourgeoisie - since his electoral success is a result of the decline of the traditional right since 1980 - and popular enough to attract the support of sections of the popular masses and the petty-bourgeoisie. Such an endeavour will be difficult to achieve for one basic reason. The political power of the most dynamic sections of the bourgeoisie is based on their economic strength and they are not yet reorganised. This is where the chronic instability and the role allotted to formations like the PS and the PRD came from.
Something the government can never hope to resolve is the increasing social crisis in the country. There are now half a million officially unemployed, 150,000 workers with 'delayed wages' , one million in a precarious employment situation or underemployed. The standard of living is the lowest in Europe apart from Turkey and more and more churches are opening up soup kitchens for the impoverished population.
The tremendous upheaval of the October 6 elections indicates the scale of this crisis without offering the least solution. The crisis of political leadership, the lack of homogeneity and of direction of the forces at play, the crisis of the role of the state are all opening up a process of recomposition the outcome of which is uncertain.
The small workers vanguard formed during the resistance to the dicatorship and in the struggles from the end of the 1960s till the end of the 1974-75 pre-revolutionary crisis is today very isolated or integrated into the trade union bureaucracy of the state apparatus. There does not yet exist a new generation of militants which is why it is difficult for the workers movement to get to grips with the current demands of the struggle. But on the other hand the bourgeoisie is weak and divided and its leaders are providing no real direction. The country is changing but no one has any idea where it is going. International Viewpoint 23 December 1985